The Israeli state sees violent settler mobs as challenging its monopoly over violence. This puts right-wing ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir in a bind: settlers facilitate the settlement project, but the state wants to control it.
The transfer of unprecedented powers over the occupied West Bank to Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich has deepened the rift between Israel’s military-security establishment and the rising settler bloc.
At least 14 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank over the last three days, making it one of the deadliest weeks since the start of 2023. Among those killed were three youths, including two 14-year-olds, and a 17-year-old.
The Israeli settler movement and state both work toward the same goal: the colonization of Palestine, and the repression of resistance to that colonization by the native population.
Israeli settlers and military systematically made life unbearable for the Bedouin community living in the West Bank’s Ein Samiya region. On May 22 they were forced to leave their lands and were displaced for the fourth time since 1969.
The Zionist ethos of “maximum land, minimum Arabs” made the Nakba possible and allows the Nakba to repeat itself every time a Zionist colonist takes over Palestinian land, whether in Ein Samiya today or in Yaffa in 1948.
Benjamin Netanyahu placates Itamar Ben-Gvir after postponing judicial overhaul by promising him the establishment of a “National Guard,” as settler violence continues spreading throughout the West Bank.
While tensions rise at the Al Aqsa compound in anticipation of a broader Israeli crackdown, settlers burned down a Palestinian home near Ramallah and continued the organized assault on Huwwara.
It has become clear that the Christian presence in the Holy Land is in grave danger from Jewish fundamentalists empowered by the new Israeli government.
Leaders from the resistance factions in Gaza vow that the West Bank will not be left alone in facing the ongoing Israeli onslaught, while many in Gaza view the Palestinian Authority as complicit.